Just a few months ago, the notion that a Volvo would win a V8 Supercars race was absurd. After all, Volvos were sensible cars driven by sensible people, not hot wheels for lead-foot racers.

All that changed when rising V8 star Scott McLaughlin hit the track in his new Volvo S60 at the season-opening Adelaide 500, in which the unlikely combination immediately made a big impact.

While it was expected that it would take Volvo several events to get up to speed in their first season of V8 racing, even with their new entry run by the seasoned Garry Rogers Motorsport team, McLaughlin and the S60 defied convention by being competitive from the start.

After McLaughlin beat five-times defending V8 champion Jamie Whincup in an epic battle for second place in the second of the March 1-2 weekend’s three races on the Adelaide Parklands street circuit, it was clear it would only be a matter of time before he and the stereotype-busting S60 V8 racer started winning.

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The V8 establishment’s worst nightmare came true in the opening race of the Perth 400 at Barbagallo Raceway on Saturday when the 20-year-old New Zealander finally converted pole position – his third in three races – to an historic victory.

It was Volvo’s first success in the Australian touring car championship or its late 1990s successor, the V8 Supercars championship, since 1986, when fellow Kiwi Robbie Francevic won three rounds on his way to the title.

McLaughlin’s narrow but comfortable win over V8 veteran Craig Lowndes in the opening 42 lap, 101 km sprint race on the undulating 2.42 km Barbagallo Raceway was the first for a Volvo at any level in Australian racing since a string of successes in the 1999 Super Touring championship.

McLaughlin actually won the final race of the V8s non-championship event at the Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix in mid-March. Although this confirmed he and Volvo were new front-running forces, it didn’t go into the official record book because of its non-title status.

Those early performances did, however, raise concerns among the leading Ford and Holden teams that Volvo had exploited the latest technical rules, introduced last year, because GRM had a year’s experience with running Holden Commodores last season.

There were calls to handicap the S60, which rivals claimed had too much horsepower for a newcomer. Its compact body is also more aerodynamic than the Commodores and Falcons.

But V8 Supercars resisted pressure to rein in the S60, maintaining that the rules were controlling technical parity between the five participating makes and there was no reason to change.

McLaughlin, who won two races in his rookie V8 championship season last year, is a major factor in Volvo becoming a contender so soon.

His front-running form has been in stark contrast to the struggles of his Swedish teammate Robert Dahlgren, who is still learning about the rigours of V8 racing at the rear of the field in an otherwise identical S60. McLaughlin is regarded as a future superstar of V8s. His effusive personality and natural talent bring to mind the similarly precocious Craig Lowndes of 20 years ago.